Comments Thread For: Boxing Without Boxing: The Great White Hype

[Goldie]

Of course there are many more people wanting to be basketball players in the US than boxers, because it's such a piss easy game to play! All you need is to be tall and able to catch a ball and stick it through a hoop.

Boxing is a much more mentally demanding and physically punishing sport than basketball, and it takes talent to be able do it well, not just physical size and athleticism.

As for your racial bullshit ... mate, you are so lacking in self-awareness it's actually funny! Look at the comments you have been posting in this thread alone - black this, white that, race, race race - and it's the same damned thing all the time with you!

Wake up and look at the man in the mirror, ffs!

Well, you’re clearly an idiot. The sad part is that you don’t even see how you’ve contradicted and painted yourself into a corner.

Your obvious ignorance of the game of basketball aside.......If boxing is so much more challenging mentally and physically than basketball and you’ve got such respect for the sport........then why do you have such little respect for deontay wilder? All people like you do is discredit wilder as a fighter despite his reign as champ. So which is it? Does boxing require mental and physical excellence to reach the top or can someone with little/no skill cherry pick his way to being champ fighting weak competition? You’re so lost you don’t even get the obvious hypocrisy lol.

Another thing, acknowledging and discussing race doesn’t equate to being a racist. I can race about race all day but that doesn’t mean that I support the systematic discrimination/oppression of others based on their race.

[Knock knock]

Ut ooo...what did your dumbass just say? The reason he got that opportunity was because he was 24? Or because he was handsome? (Okay you chicks are entitled to your opinions or gays) ...or was it college? Or the combination? How many so-called blacks...get the opportunity to go to Notre Dame?

So he's afforded a better opportunity to even go to the college...that turns out to be the initial fanbase of his marketing behind the b.s....

Why is he even considered handsome...lacks vibrance/color... has fur... Pinocchio nose...so who gets to promote whose handsome or define beauty? From what & whose platform? Based off what standard or perspective?

See it's some deep rooted fantasy of the mind type **** with you folks....

[HarvardBlue]

After reading that, I hope you never agree with me on anything again.

Don't worry, it's the first and the last time.

Americian athlete's choose Basketball or Football over boxing because both are more popular and more lucrative currently. Not because it's easier.

[kafkod]

Well, you’re clearly an idiot. The sad part is that you don’t even see how you’ve contradicted and painted yourself into a corner.

Your obvious ignorance of the game of basketball aside.......If boxing is so much more challenging mentally and physically than basketball and you’ve got such respect for the sport........then why do you have such little respect for deontay wilder? All people like you do is discredit wilder as a fighter despite his reign as champ. So which is it? Does boxing require mental and physical excellence to reach the top or can someone with little/no skill cherry pick his way to being champ fighting weak competition? You’re so lost you don’t even get the obvious hypocrisy lol.

Another thing, acknowledging and discussing race doesn’t equate to being a racist. I can race about race all day but that doesn’t mean that I support the systematic discrimination/oppression of others based on their race.

Your instinctive response to anybody who doesn't agree with your opinion on anything is to pull out the race card.

From where did you get the idea that people see everything in terms of race?

Like I said, look at the man in the mirror.

[kafkod]

Don't worry, it's the first and the last time.

Americian athlete's choose Basketball or Football over boxing because both are more popular and more lucrative currently. Not because it's easier.

Well, at least you didn't call me a racist for not sharing your admiration of basketball players, so I take back what I said before ... if you want to agree with me on something else in the future, feel free.

[Goldie]

Your instinctive response to anybody who doesn't agree with your opinion on anything is to pull out the race card.

From where did you get the idea that people see everything in terms of race?

Like I said, look at the man in the mirror.

Race is clearly the motivation behind your ignorant contradictory comments and views, so why not just own it instead of looking like a dishonest piece of schit? You’re ****ting on basketball trying to discredit the sport and those that play because your white ethnic group isn’t especially good at it and black Americans dominate. Own it.

Personally I agree with your take on wilder. He’s not that skilled as a boxer and the competition he’s faced hasn’t been impressive. Yet he’s 42-1-1(41 kos) and spent 5 years as champ with 10 defenses. All that after picking up the sport at 20 lol. It’s not about disrespecting either sport, but you’re lying to yourself if you truly believe the dumb **** you’ve said in this thread.

[kafkod]

Race is clearly the motivation behind your ignorant contradictory comments and views, so why not just own it instead of looking like a dishonest piece of schit? You’re ****ting on basketball trying to discredit the sport and those that play because your white ethnic group isn’t especially good at it and black Americans dominate. Own it.

Lord, you're ******. Nobody outside America gives a flying fuck about the NBA or what race dominates it.



This is obviously a big deal to you. It means nothing at all to me.

['b']

I for one am really looking forward to boxing becoming a truly Global sport and would like to imagine that one day we'll see the emergence of new ideas and philosophies in the sport, maybe even a Chinese or Indian 'school' or 'style' of boxing. Could be I'll be dead before that actually happens though at this rate..

Very interesting century ahead, especially with China and India developing into real superpowers with higher standards of living. The Middle East also needs to stabilise/rebuild.

Some people are so moronic that they believe in racial stereotypes - "chinese are small and weak" etc. but there are some giants over there, and race/genetics play a small role. Take an elite athlete and feed him and the next 3 generations of his bloodline nothing but bread and sugar and watch out his offspring become weak, fragile, genetically defective etc.

By the same token, feed a poor starving villager beef, vegetables and plenty of food for him and his descendants and watch at how much larger and stronger they are. There's a reason why western Asian people for example are much taller than their people back home. Diet plays such an immense role in the physicality of human beings. Kings and Warlords throughout history have known this, you can alter a people just by controlling what they eat.

(Just look at the skeletal structure of modern western men to western men from 100 years ago...it's like another species)

[Dasmius Shinobi]

Keep them coming.

Great movie to explore again. Good times!

[Bronx2245]

True, and what happened in the UK during the same time frame - the deliberated decimation of the coal mining, car manufacturing, steel making, ship building industries by a succession of right wing Tory governments - has denied 2 generations of young working class Brits something their forefathers once took for granted .. jobs.






This is a point that US fans blaming basketball and grid-iron football for the down turn in US boxing dominance don't address. The same thing that happened at HW also happened in all the other divisions. Unless the US introduced midget league NFL and NBA during the 90's, another explanation is needed.

The most obvious explanation is that the standard of pro boxing outside the US improved considerably during the same time frame. As a proponent of Occam's razor, that's the explanation I'm going with.

It did not happen with "all the other divisions." 126-168 is well represented with U.S. talent! The biggest drop-off is seen at the HW division, and that's because our athletic big men play other sports, especially our NBA players! If you were here to see how big AAU Basketball is in the areas that used to produce our fighters, you would understand! Don't even get me started with the culture of "grid-Iron" Football in the Southeast U.S.!

If LeBron James or Zion Williamson was born in 1950, they would've been the HW Champion of the World! The Youth Boxing programs in the U.S. are way below par from the 1970s! The AAU Basketball programs are HUGE! They so influential that the U.S. Gov't has to intervene because they are corrupting the NCAA Basketball programs! Money talks! NBA and NFL are they only reasons Boxing declined in the U.S., but they play a MAJOR role:

The Decline of the Sweet Science

For multiple reasons, boxing has fallen on hard times, and barely exists anymore. But as recently as the early 1950s, boxing was likely still America’s second favorite sport after baseball. Now it’s a niche sport, on the way to near extinction. Football (talk about unpeaceful), baseball, basketball, hockey, golf, tennis, and others now claim the attention of contemporary sports-minded folks. With the exception of a few adept practitioners and blockbuster matchups, the current product in the ring richly deserves the obscurity that has overtaken the sport.

The causes of the decline are many, including mob influence and unscrupulous promoters, so focused on their own bottom line that they damaged the sport that made them wealthy. Television first helped re-interest fans in a sport they had soured on a bit after the war. But over-exposure on television led to the proliferation of sanctioning agencies and new weight classes so that there are more champions now than even dedicated fight fans can keep up with. Television can put on any number of “title fights” now. But the titles have about been emptied of meaning. As Silver puts it, “If baseball were run like boxing, there would be at least four separate World Series champions.” The heavyweight champion of the world used to be the most revered title in sports. Now try and find anyone who can name any of the several fighters who hold this title.

More important, free boxing on TV led to the end of neighborhood fight clubs and gyms – boxing’s littoral, where not only fighters learned their trade, but trainers and corner-men, and managers found employment. Why go to a fight club in a crummy section of town when you can watch boxing free on television? The results have been fewer boxers, fewer fights, less well-trained fighters, and nearly skill-free boxing matches, many of which resemble a bar brawl more than the high-level athletic competitions of boxing’s past. While a good case can be made that skill levels in the other spectator sports that engage us have increased, skills in the boxing game have eroded badly. For those who came up with and loved the sport (count me in), it’s a sad state of affairs.

https://spectator.org/the-decline-of-the-sweet-science/